Iran war: US says ready to resume war if no deal reached

Diary Entry, Monticello, this 12th day of October

The report of renewed saber-rattling between the United States and Persia weighs heavily upon my mind. That a nation conceived in the rejection of arbitrary power should now posture with threats of renewed hostilities - absent the clear exhaustion of all diplomatic avenues - strikes me as a dangerous departure from reason.

I observe with dismay the familiar pattern: the assertion of “red lines” by executive fiat, the implicit equation of negotiation with weakness, the preference for the blunt instrument of war over the finer tools of statecraft. These are the very habits of monarchy we once repudiated. When in the course of human affairs, a government claims readiness for war before demonstrating equal readiness for peace, it invites the very instability it purports to deter.

The particulars give pause: the absence of congressional deliberation, the lack of a formal declaration, the reliance upon presidential whim rather than the deliberate will of the people’s representatives. These are not the mechanisms of a republic, but the impulses of a court.

Yet I must also confess a darker recognition - that the tree of liberty sometimes requires the blood of patriots and tyrants to be refreshed. If Persia indeed seeks dominion over her neighbors, if she stifles the natural rights of her own citizens, then resistance becomes not merely policy but moral necessity. But let us be certain of the facts, let us exhaust the remedies of reason, before we unsheathe the sword.

The tension is inescapable: the same Enlightenment that teaches us war is the failure of politics also instructs us that some truths are worth defending by force. May wisdom guide us to know the difference.

The statement from the department was clear. It indicated that the cessation of hostilities was a provisional measure, pending the successful negotiation of a final agreement. The final agreement, it was further clarified, would require the acceptance of certain preliminary conditions, described as red lines. The other party, however, has issued a counter-statement, indicating that no final agreement yet exists. This is correct. A final agreement cannot exist until the preliminary conditions are met. The preliminary conditions, however, cannot be formally established as valid until they are incorporated into a final agreement. The department has therefore announced it is prepared to resume the previous state of affairs. This is not a threat, but a procedural necessity. One cannot remain indefinitely in the antechamber of a negotiation; if the door to the final chamber will not open, one must return to the waiting room from which one came. The waiting room, of course, has its own procedures. It requires a state of alertness, a posture of readiness. The readiness is not for war, but for the possibility of a return to the process that leads to the negotiation about the final agreement. I read this and understand the mechanism perfectly. It is the same as being told my application is incomplete, though all requested documents are attached, because a new form has been issued for the attestation of the completeness of the attachments. The old form, which declared the attachments complete, is no longer valid. I must begin again. And so they are beginning again. The official is helpful. He says they are more than capable of processing the resumption. It is simply the next step.

The balance sheet of American foreign policy has just been restated in bold ink - though the ink is the colour of blood, and the ledger is being written by men who seem to have forgotten that war is not a game of poker where the stakes are merely reputations. The United States, it appears, is prepared to resume hostilities with Iran not because of any material necessity, but because the President has declared his red lines and now insists they must be drawn in blood rather than diplomacy. This is not a matter of strategic inevitability; it is a political choice, dressed up in the language of necessity. The “more than capable” phrasing is a classic Keynesian paradox of thrift applied to geopolitics: the United States is hoarding its capacity for war not because it must, but because it believes others will perceive it as doing so. The beauty contest has begun, and the question is not whether Iran will comply, but whether the American public and its allies will believe the threat is credible enough to justify the cost.

The short-run suffering of Iranians is already being calculated in terms of body counts and economic disruption, while the long-run benefits - whatever they may be - are being traded in the abstract currency of “strength.” But the long run is a poor consolation when the present is being sacrificed to the altar of ego. The Treasury of war is being balanced not by the needs of the nation, but by the whims of a man who seems to mistake bluster for strategy. And the rest of us - those who must live with the consequences - are left to wonder whether the real author of this policy is not the President, but the political class that has long fed on the illusion of perpetual conflict. The animal spirits of American foreign policy are not those of prudence, but of recklessness, and the market for war is being manipulated by men who have forgotten that the economy of violence is not a self-correcting mechanism. It is a choice, and choices have authors.